The National Football League, most commonly known as the NFL is the main football league of the United States. This league is divided into two Conferences, the American Conference – AFC, and the National Conference NFC. Both Conferences have 16 teams, giving a total of 32 teams in the NFL.
These conferences are also divided into four divisions, East, North, South and West.
Here we explain how the NFL works on each of its phases.
NFL Preseason
The teams battle to win the conference in which they are. The championship begins the first week of September with the regular season, which are the first matches of the NFL, and finishes on December the same year. After the regular season the best 6 teams of each Conference advance to the post season, the playoffs. The teams play the regular season in 17 weeks, and they have just one to rest.
They play against teams of the same division and from the other conference. The winner of each division, plus two others that advanced to the Wildcards Match, dispute the playoffs.
Playoff Season
History of the NFL
Some business men saw the profitability of having a franchise and wanted to buy some teams of the AFL, but none of them were on sale. So these business men entrepreneurs made their own teams to participate in the NFL which was the main rival of the AFL.
The American Professional Football Conference or the APFC was created as consequence of several meetings in the year 1920. They had as purpose to raise the standards of professional football. The bidding of players was taken off after the APFC was established.
Then, the same year, the league’s name (APFC) was changed by American Professional Football Association (APFA), and later in 1922 by the National football league (NFL).
After financial crisis in many teams, some of AFL team had to joint to the NFL, and after several meetings, the two leagues announced their official fusion in 1966. Creating what we call now the NFL, the current football league.
History of the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the NFL final match and championship that is played between the two conference winners, the two best teams in America face each other to define the ultimate champion.
The Super Bowl, which is played the first Sunday of February every year in a random stadium of the United States (usually in the tropical areas as it is winter season), is one of the most watched broadcasts of the year with numbers ranging between 111 – 116 million viewers around the world. A Super Bowl 30 second commercial is the most expensive in the world with a cost of 4 million dollars and rising each year.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have been the team with major number of Super Bowl titles until now with a total of 6.
NFL drafts season
The draft is a draw made every year in the month of April. In this season, every team chooses university football players to join their ranks.
The draft has a curious way to function. The team with the worst performance of the season is the one who choose first, the next to choose is the second worst team, and so on, until the last team chooses their new players which is the winner of the Super Bowl of that season. This system prevents rich team to come out more favored and levels team competitiveness, atleast at the college draft level.
NFL Teams
Each team has around 53 players in its roster, at least 45 of them are used to play in a match but only 11 are in the field, either to defense or attack.
The 32 NFL teams are the current franchises that dispute the NFL championship every year. These teams are located in different places of the whole country. All of them have the opportunity to participate in the NFL championship, but at the end only the best takes the NFL title home.
The teams of the NFL in the two different conferences are:
American Football Conference – AFC
East Conference: Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots and New York Jets
West Conference: Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers
North Conference: Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers
South Conference: Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans
National Football Conference – NFC
East Conference: Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins
West Conference: Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams
North Conference: Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings
South Conference: Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers